MTN banks on Ericsson to deepen fintech operations in Africa

To deepen its fintech operations in Africa, MTN Group has entered a strategic partnership with Swedish technology firm, Ericsson.

With a focus on providing mobile banking services and financially empowering millions of African citizens, the partnership aimed to increase financial inclusion from first-time consumers to high-end enterprise applications by leveraging MTN’s Mobile Money (MoMo) service on the Ericsson Wallet Platform.

The agreement was inked during a visit by senior MTN Group officials to Ericsson’s Group Headquarters in Kista, Sweden, where the two businesses addressed major strategic priorities and future collaboration.

ITWeb noted that Ericsson Wallet Platform conducts over 400 million mobile wallets and 2.8 billion transactions worth $40 billion every month through communication service providers and financial institutions worldwide.

The companies said the cooperation extension also involves a move to public cloud deployments as well as the development of the Open API services platform, which will help accelerate financial innovation in Africa.

MTN stated: “It will allow entrepreneurs to develop revenue-generating applications and, by utilising continuous integration/continuous deployment, will enable an automated software development and deployment workflow for the MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) fintech platform across all of its African operations.”

The full suite of services would provide MTN’s African customers with access to a mobile connectivity-based financial ecosystem.

In addition to accelerating MTN’s goal of increasing financial inclusion for the unbanked, the service provider will provide innovative financial services to meet the fast-changing digital financial needs of individuals and businesses.

According to the parties, the platform places a strong emphasis on financial technology (fintech), with focus areas including the growth of merchant and e-commerce payments, facilitating national and international money transfers among family members and others (remittance services), advancing banking solutions (banktech), and providing insurance services (insurtech).

With over 63 million MTN active users using its Mobile Money platform in some capacity across 16 African nations, MTN MoMo’s yearly transaction value has nearly tripled from 2018, rising from $76 billion to $204 billion by 2022.

Chief Fintech Officer at MTN Group, Serigne Dioum, stated: “With 63.5 million active users, our Mobile Money platform is advancing economic empowerment across the continent. MTN Mobile Money provides a wide range of mobile financial services to every user, including money transfers, payments, savings, and loans, while actively fostering financial inclusion and economic development across the continent.

“Our collaboration with Ericsson is a critical step towards achieving our Ambition 2025 goal of establishing the largest and most valuable platform business in Africa while creating shared value for our customers.”

On his part, Head of mobile financial services at Ericsson, Michael Wallis-Brown, added that Ericsson’s collaboration with MTN is a world-leading example of mobile financial services’ ability to financially empower people and businesses, from giving the unbanked their first chance to control their finances, making it easier for women to access financial services, and promoting digital inclusion, to allowing more advanced users to access high-end services.

“This model can be applied in any market anywhere in the world to genuinely empower mobile subscribers of all financial standings. Our valued MTN partnership also supports Ericsson’s AfricaInMotion vision to promote a sustainable and connected Africa,” he stated.